


'Cause I'm the One That Jaded You

by Etnoe



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Community: guardian_kink, Courtship, Dysfunctional Relationships, Female Peter Quill, Mommy Issues, Other, Slow To Update, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-30 08:49:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8526736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: Yondu has non-platonic feelings for the smart-mouthed Terran female he's been raising. It's a shame she seems to see him as something of a father figure, but Yondu isn't going to let that bother him too much. He has no qualms about having her as his mate.





	1. Take a look, up and down

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [kink meme prompt over at guardian-kink](http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com/1806.html?thread=251918#t251918). Fem Peter is called Angel, because Meredith Quill had strong and loving opinions regarding both her child and her space boyfriend, and you can get away with 'Angel' easier with a girl than a boy.
> 
> I write Peter as having issues with women in this fic that probably wouldn't follow from canon for most people, but in my head, male Peter had this exact same phase. It might help to know that my take on Peter Quill's sexuality pre-"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" revolves around mother issues more than anything else.
> 
> Title from Aerosmith's "Jaded", because it's a very motivating track to headbang along to while writing this.

* * *

  


  
It just might be possible, Yondu thought, to enjoy the view for once.

There was nothing on the horizon to worry about - a rare situation on any job, even on a nearly unoccupied continent like this. No on-planet response to the abandoned fortress's few wailing sirens, or to the celebratory racket of Ravagers unleashed and accomplished; no starships in paler shades of the sky's blue-green and gaining their own colours the closer they raced - not even another Ravager faction's ship. Of late _that_ had been a problem, with Santi's crew constantly dogging them to pick up their scraps.

Yondu stood at the edge of the fortress's overgrown garden to enjoy the rarity of time to spare on land and the sights that were on offer. Like the thick growths of shrubs and trees - and how it was getting dug up by crewmembers taking samples of plants and dirt, on suspicion that there could be valuable qualities to them. Over there, it was mighty pleasing to see another enterprising posse stripping the underground parts of the security system of reusable and saleable parts. Possibly he should question why there was smoke rising from one wing of the fortress, though. He'd for sure have to ask about the crewmembers hanging out of windows, some laughing and some screaming blue murder, but it was at least kind of funny.

And next to him stood Quill, hero of the moment, as relaxed as you please while she sized up the situation too. He could have ordered her onto one of the salvage crews, but left it.

In the cooler bag slung over Yondu's shoulder was the core memory and processing unit of the central computer of the Tokere-Hull Fortress - the score they'd come for. They'd been hacking away at the crumbling, plant-strangled inside of the fortress for hours, their scanners unable to pick up the computer. They might have searched for a lot longer if Quill hadn't stared curiously at all the pipes and aqueducts around the place and then raised the possibility of bio-tech that needed a lot to drink. No one had bothered to bring a scanner rigged for analysing organic matter, but the main ship's scanners could do that sweep, so a call to the crew still shipboard had set the job back on track. And then if Quill hadn't been a sweet talker with even sweeter syruped huskbites crammed in a pocket, handy to use as a treat, the computer they found might not have been so agreeable about going on a trip with them.

A bit of smarts and a bit of luck to earn her keep - Quill was downright reliable that way by now, constantly pulling out handy tricks. He grinned at her until she straightened up to see which way he'd go with that expression.

"Good job!" said Yondu, and "Damn right!" said Angel, shooting his tone right back to him. Like it would kill her to be grateful for a compliment!

He glared - she twitched one side of her nose like the look kicked off an itch, then gave a clod of upturned dirt a nudge with her foot. "So, you think those guys are on to something with the 'valuable dirt' idea?"

"Just 'cause you ain't got a use for it doesn't meant somebody else in this great big galaxy won't have ideas. And with the bio-tech they have up in that fortress, running when nobody's been here in how many years, the computer had to get its nutrition from somewhere. The soil seems a likely enough source."

"Well, I'm totally not carrying the dirt around." Angel assessed him with a grin. "I can still milk my good job that much, right, Captain?"

Yondu snorted, clapping her on the shoulder. Sure, why not.

They wandered on, and by now Yondu was enjoying the outdoors air, fresh and heavy with plant scents, even more than the sight of his crew getting them all richer. But it was getting time to call everybody back, especially those idiots still hanging out of the windows.

When Angel saw him looking back at the fortress she tilted her head towards it. "So, how do you want to deal with that place?" And there was something in one of her hands.

He hadn't seen when she took it out, but now she was calling attention to it with motion - a small object, rolled around on her palm and kept from falling by the loose clutch of her fingers. "What, that a bomb? You'd rather blow it up than leave Santi's crew anything to take? Sure. Clear the boys out of the building, then finish the job."

"Nah. You finish it."

Quill then deemed it good to walk away, and Yondu stared, gobsmacked. She'd ordered around, and then turned her back on _her captain_ ... except that then she spun around and strode back with nary a care. "See, I'm so little and delicate. A 'tender morsel', so I've heard."

"You ain't heard it in a while. You _miss_ being told there's a pot big enough to fit you in for supper, girl?" Yondu snarled.

She merely sighed the way she'd learned when she hit puberty, her life so very burdened and her worth so far above what she had to accept. "I'm just saying. Little ole me would have trouble taking a whole building down. Wouldn't want to get my hands dirty."

"How about these dainty digits? You think I wanna get these messed up at the end of a long day?" Yondu wriggled his fingers, getting in her face. He then realised that he was playing along with a meting out of Angel Quill's abundant supply of nonsense. Not threatening her. Not smacking her upside the head and then ignoring her. Playing along.

It was a full moment. He was up to the eyeballs with exasperation, astonishment, impatience, pride, intrigue, and even felt the stir of an inclination to play along some more. He clucked his tongue. "Quill, spit out what it is you got in mind. Score's done, salvage is almost collected, and there's even time left to get away free and clear. Don't waste it."

"Trackers. This little ball splits up, and the parts can be programmed to go find the nearest moving targets," she said, tipping the ball from right hand to the left and holding it to him. Looking carefully, there were seams visible to show how it would split. It wasn't entirely transparent in its current form, but the component parts probably would be. "And yeah, they are for Santi's pack of assholes. I do want to finish things up with them, but not exactly in a way that means explosions."

He automatically scanned the sky for signs of the other Ravager group. "They're the ones following us - I can just take a look back to find them. If they can't manage their own business, why would I start doing it?"

"What, serious--"

" _Explain yourself._ "

"All right! They are on our back, as a crew, and they're not likely to get off any time soon. If they'd team up with us reliably, it would be one thing." Her voice went pious. "That would be the Ravager way. But they just keep using us to find good places to join in on a raid or take advantage of our work so they can try and salvage extra! _And_ , the real problem is--"

Yondu interrupted. "It's only going to take so long before they start trying to beat us to a score. That where you're going with this?"

"That's what I've been thinking." She threw the ball in the air, caught it again.

"So you plant trackers, they latch onto our scavengers somehow, and then you've got _what_ in mind?"

Angel was excited, clearly getting a kick out of guessing right. "These trackers are really hard to detect, very tough, they go after you if you're within five feet's distance, resistant to most decontamination procedures and various liquids... I've done my homework, okay? I can run into the fortress and drop these at likely spots, they do their thing, and then we can keep track of their movements and see when the Santi crew looks like it's deciding to cut in on one of our jobs."

"Those ain't able to send us transmissions of what they're saying? Gimme that." He nabbed the ball when she tossed it to him. It didn't look capable of much complexity.

"It's not the focus of the tech. They just emit a signal on a chosen frequency."

He looked up at the sky again, turning the idea over. The view was both pretty and all clear, but Santi's crew had been trailing them for, oh, eight jobs now. It wouldn't be clear for long... "Chances are they'd find the trackers before we get any use out of them, or even get rid of them by accident. We might do well to save this for a job where we got more control of variables."

"We don't have to wait for them to find out they're being tracked, though. We have an option to use it long before then." For the first time, Angel faltered.

Just that look on her face meant trouble. "Uh-oh," Yondu said, already sceptical.

She took a deep breath and sidled closer to speak in a low voice. "All that needs to happen is, we let the Nova Corps know about this one particular vessel, idling along and sending out a certain signal, and they can track the transmission if they feel like it, but they probably should because we strongly suspect the ship might contain a crew of--" 

"Set the authorities on other Ravagers?" he hissed.

"I know, I know! But they're butting up against the code too! We can't keep waiting on a tail that's going to turn on us. Waiting for the rest of the crew to start leaving our loot behind for those pitiful bastards, or to spoil for a fight to get rid of them that might lose us some of our people. This would work. One anonymous tip, and." She shrugged.

"You got smart, is your problem," he said. Smarter, bigger, not so wet-eyed and sullen - it bothered him in a brief flash that she was this and not that - a new variable to assess - no longer just needing to learn, but ready to deal out her own lessons. And it made him want to smile.

He didn't, but Angel perked up and started to preen, tugging her coat straight like it wasn't already settled right. Good at picking up on cues, too, this girl.

A tilt of his head towards the plains beyond the garden, away from the crew, and she strode in that direction like an obedient soldier, grinning when he strolled after her and kept talking.

"You tell me about what kind of chance anybody's got of figuring out the sale trail that ends with you owning these trackers. If it's hard enough to pin on you, I'll allow you to seed them round this place. We get the Santi beeping out a signal, put through the call to Nova Corps as soon as they start dealing us some trouble - BUT we don't damn well let any arrest happen! If we know the shine's coming, we can stock up and prepare to take them on. Turn ourselves around, help out Santi and crew, and take what they got left in payment for it. Maybe take a couple of the scavengers on ourselves, if there's anybody useful."

"Oh, fine, if you wanna go and be _nice_ about it," Angel said.

He whistled and she jumped like her boots had blown up, looking in horror at his hip - where the arrow was sheathed and unresponsive, since he'd used totally the wrong pitch. She'd been kidding around, after all.

Angel held her hands up in her favourite gesture of appeal. "All right! You're a bastard. I'm impressed. Still number one bastard, Udonta," she said, and he tossed the ball of trackers back to her.

They got the sketch of the plan down quickly. Fine details could be sorted out later - she'd tailed him enough over the years that people wouldn't much worry about their getting a little more chatty. It was the kind of plan some crewmembers would make noise about, but he and Quill wouldn't need to pull in anyone else. Making a phone call to Nova Corps wouldn't exactly require manpower.

The plan was a good thing; it was about time to deal with Santi and crew. Yeah, he liked the plan. Quill coming to him with it...

He weighed his own responses as the two of them spread the message to head back to the ship. Sucking up was irritating - but it made sense as a tactic for Quill, weakest and most foolish among his Ravagers for so long, and he barely noticed it by now. She'd been happy to turn Ravagers over to the Nova Corps - because she wanted to save his own crew some fighting and dying for no profit. He trusted her.

Damn all. There it was.

It took Angel a while to corral the crew out of Tokere-Hull, well after Yondu had the rest of them cleared out of the gardens, since she had to find good places to plant her trackers. Not a second glance gave evidence of hesitation afterwards when she trotted away from the stragglers and over to him, falling in step to board the shuttle-ship he was taking back to the main one. Easy in her allegiance and probably as trusting as he felt regarding her. From the corner of his eye, he kept sparing attention to enjoy the view.

Where'd she get this supply of confidence from, anyway? It had come and gone often when she was younger, cycling through her along with stubborn loudness and watchful silence, but he'd have to say she was settled into it now. Probably because her place aboard had settled too; there were no more surprises about what tasks she'd have to do to earn her keep. Angel Quill lived the life of any Ravager now. Aside from being a whole lot more musical than the average.

Yondu thought of her standing next to him down there on the ground, giving him gentle grief without a care and not a twinge of fear. That attitude could be a sticking point when it came from some, but in this case his thoughts were impatient to point out other things about those moments. For example, he liked how she stood - long legs, using her hips enough to take note of even under the straight-down cover of her Ravager's red coat, in a way that told how much she liked to move and dance. He liked her sitting down too, suddenly, because it caught his attention how her one leg was propped on the seat, ticking open and closed to the beat of what Mama Quill's gift was playing. One of the sadder ones, slow.

This might have been brewing in him for some time.

Angel rested her head against his shoulder. It lasted a little while, with silence arranged around one exchange between them - "I did good?" "You ain't in trouble."

Well, it did depend on her definition of trouble. And how much he was willing to get into himself.

*

There were certain realities to consider. The next time Yondu passed Quill in the corridors, he looked her up and down to spot any oddities or outright problems that he might have stopped noticing in daily life, then motioned for her to stop. "Quill, you done growing?"

"Oh, come on. I can't do vents maintenance anymore! I will actually get stuck this time! I can't, okay, as a matter of physics, biology..." With those two things she ran out of points to tick off on her fingers and put her hands up in protest. "You gotta just get a bot to do it, Yondu; get several bots like any even barely decent ship this side of the war."

"Why, thank you for your kind and oh, so helpful offer to purchase us some cute li'l bots for taking care of the nuts and bolts around here." Quill's face fell, but it could go either way on if she'd take it as an order or if she'd creatively ignore him. "I asked what I asked: You done growing, Terran? There any need to prepare for you shedding a skin, upping your tonnage and growing baleen, spitting a cocoon out all over yourself?"

Most likely not, judging by the incredulity on her face, but then she did a double take. "Huh. Probably I'm done, but I don't quite know. Shipboard time is so..." She never had got the hang of doing conversions between time spent travelling, locations they stayed at for a long while, and how it all related back to her home planet. Numbers didn't generally present a problem for her, so it probably came down to how she found most anything related to Terra to be a hot-button.

Her solution was to pull at the neckline of her clothes so she could peer at her chest. "Yeah, I'd say I'm full-grown." Quill looked up with a nod, pleased. "Done pretty well for myself."

Yondu squinted at her in disbelief. "Well, that's all right, then. And as a lucky bonus, now I know never to ask you to try and act at all classy if we're running a scam that needs that sort of thing."

She laid into trying to convince him that she certainly could pull off a scam like that, _do you have one lined up? Is that what we're doing next?_ , and also to go on about how he had no reason to pick up dumb ideas in weird places regarding Terrans, instead of consulting her. Waving off the torrent of words and starting to walk again didn't deter her, and she abandoned whatever she'd been heading to in order to keep angling for information.

Yondu responded but barely, preoccupied with thinking about her dad's contribution to the mix. Quill thought herself Terran and as far as he'd experienced, looked it too, so it seemed like she was one of those cases where the genes practically all went one way.

All of which meant she was likely to stay as she was. So he could, on a technical level, fuck Angel Quill.

The twinge that shot through his guts confirmed that the thought still had attractions. Hadn't been this het up since the last time they were headed for shore leave. He shook his head to himself and changed the track of his thoughts.

"Hey, Quill." When he raised his eyebrows and flicked a glance around, she scoped the area too. Their surroundings were quiet, in the way that an area sometimes randomly emptied out. There were muted sounds elsewhere, but no one in earshot.

Yondu spoke fast but easily: "Like I said, I won't overstretch you with any requests to act like you got class, but you _could_ fake a good distress call when the time comes. A live one would be the best way to get a fast response outta the shine. You got anything to make one with? Ain't nothing in my box of tricks."

Ravagers all had their gewgaws and tools to make their work easier and harder to predict than people already expected of semi-feral opportunists. Aside from the common gadgets, Yondu's stash tended largely towards portable dampeners, shields, and field generators in case anyone tried to get clever with sound-cancellation devices and didn't feel up to listening to him doing a little whistling. 

"Hmm... There is... No, it'd be too complicated, probably wouldn't look convincing." Angel shook her head. "I think we're going to have to buy equipment. Unless you think it'd work out okay to ask someone else for theirs. Ussu's got projectors that might work, and Ingy, Randall, Panpan..."

"Not that expensive to buy something. And I've already got a signal scrambler for when we send out the call, at least. We can pick an imager up when we deliver our dirt from Tokere-Hull to that lab."

Footsteps and voices started getting too close for them to continue making plans, and Angel nodded and then said in a louder voice than before, "The very valuable dirt! I guess I stand corrected." She gave an elaborate shrug.

"Yeah, like I toldja. Didn't I tell ya?" He aimed a swipe to ruffle her hair. She dodged and darted in front of him, fists up as she did fancy footwork. As the others came in sight of them - Pud, Nytto, and Horuz; luckily, people most likely not worth worrying about if they had overheard anything - he was swatting at her head again as she pretend-jabbed his chest and arms.

He liked that they saw this - him and Quill being cosy. He probably shouldn't. And then that pleasantness switched right round to him feeling sour enough to spit when Angel went radiant on seeing them. Yondu looked narrowly between his crewmembers. 

She wasn't just plain happy, though - that was a shit-stirring look to her face. "Pud, hey! How's the old vertigo treatment going?"

Embarrassingly, judging by the purpling ears. "Shut up, Quill!"

Nytto growled sidelong, looking sulky, and said "See if I help out again," which made Horuz grunt and Angel laugh.

"Shut up the lot of you and keep going," Horuz said, pushing his companions in the back. He nodded to Yondu. "Captain. Don't you worry, I got these fools in hand. First thing to keep in mind: No more hanging out of windows!" he instructed sarcastically as they rounded a corner.

"Was it them who put the others up to that back at Tokere-Hull?" Yondu asked Angel.

She snickered and shook her head. "That dumbass Pud admitted he gets freaked out by making landfall and seeing the ground come rushing up. So everybody he was with naturally decided to help him get used to heights by hanging him out the windows by his ankles, and Nytto and a couple of the others got themselves hung out too so they could keep him company. Adorable, right? And _so dumb_." 

He stared in the direction those three had gone in and sighed. "It might be better to jettison my entire crew and recruit fresh."

"Hey, not me. I'm someone who's got--" she sidled close and whispered. "Really awesome plans!" She winked.

It had seemed to Yondu like a good idea to wait until after the Santi crew plan was done before he went after her good and proper. After a fight and a victory everybody would be happy, buzzed, loving life that bit extra, and stumbling into each other and heading off to bunks. Pairing off then was practically a tradition; all he'd need to do would be to ask Quill if she felt up to letting him have it.

Now he was rethinking. It might be better to ask right now and give her time to chew on it. Since he'd needed a switch-up in perspective to come to the idea, Quill would probably need to get used to it too. He could picture her making those big eyes and going slack-jawed goofy like she did when she was surprised. Nobody else on board had asked her to bunk down before, he was pretty sure, as it wasn't anything he could remember coming up in jokes or gossip. Surely if someone had approached her she'd be Miss Popularity by now, since he hadn't exactly set out to fill the crew with cuties. She was easily one of the most attractive people on board. Even if no one else had said a word about bunking with her so far, it was awfully unlikely she'd shut up about it herself.

Probably nobody wanted to risk pissing him off. From the start Quill had been considered his cargo, his kid, his problem, and eventually, part of his crew no matter what got said about it. Most wouldn't want to overstep, the rest wouldn't risk it. Of course, once it got around that he'd decided it was all right to extend Quill an offer for a tumble, a number of them would do the same.

Others would back up even further, he reassured himself. They'd think he might consider himself the only person who could ask.

He did, really.

"Gimme that," Yondu said to Angel while refusing to think too hard about doing so, indicating her hip where the Walkman was hooked. She looked clueless, so he tapped a fingertip to the foam of one of the headphones resting at her neck. "That."

Her hands protectively covered both headphones. " _Man!_ Is it 'try and wangle absolutely everything out of Quill' day? Even when you already got a promise out of me for some top of the line ship maintenance bots?"

Oh, now it was a promise. He smiled, but she'd picked a poor option for a bribe. "I'd like 'Moonage Daydream'," he said, picking one of the names that Angel had caused to drill its way into his memory banks. "Bet you can get it there on the first try."

Being that she was full crazy with regards to the whole Awesome Mixtape-Walkman setup, she could, listening for barely a second and then pressing buttons with ferocious exactitude to get to the song. Glaring past him, Angel handed the Walkman over. He took obvious care in adjusting the headset and putting it on, then pressed play and heard the familiar words anew: _I'm a Trinan Snapper / I'm a mama-papa coming for you..._

Easy as that. First step of courtship complete, and would you credit it, if his translator wasn't messing up then it came with what could be considered pretty fitting lyrics to boot.

Fuck it all direct to hell. So he was ready for this much trouble. _Angel Quill._ Not asking her how about occasionally wrapping her long legs around his waist, or to indulge his impression that species that kept that much hair on the head had to be all right with having it used as a handle - but Angel being a proper mate, a partner. His own personal kid idiot who he'd once fished out of an industrial toaster by the legs, his swaggering woman who still as a point of dead serious vengeance swore to get Kraglin in a toaster too even though he at least knew what the damn things looked like. According to lore he'd have to help, goddammit.

Of course, it wasn't like she knew Zatoan lore.

If he helped her anyway, at least he wouldn't get bored any time soon. Would be kinda funny.

Going after her meant there wouldn't be any need to put up with imagining her getting in anyone's bunk but her own or his, and he could picture her in his awfully easily.

He kept himself from running fingertips along the Walkman hitched to his belt loop - Angel wouldn't like it when she was already grouchy. If he did this properly and told her that he had courtship in mind she could have given him her most valued possession without all that reluctance, knowing it as a sign of agreement to try and see what they could be about together. He liked that she'd handed it over anyway, sure he wouldn't do harm to this thing she loved. If she'd really thought he was going to be trouble she'd have run with it or got violent.

This was far from the ideal courtship token as it had been long ago, back home, between his tribe and most of the closest neighbouring ones. On two occasions he'd received the traditional yaka arrow from his intended and he'd parted with his own once, and arrows were a matter of life and death to give away even for a short time. Years after that and years before now, he'd been given access to a life savings account, more money than he'd seen in one place at that point. Last time he'd wanted to go after someone he'd got a photograph for a second, which had been torn from his hand and taken back before he could feel insulted about being courted via something so useless. Angel had rubbed off on him, though. This gift from her mother was as much sentiment as you could cram into a small assortment of plastics, but she'd sunk years, blood, and all the coaxing, lying, arguing and wheedling at her disposal into keeping it. It was dumb but she'd die for it, and she'd given it to him.

"I'm not keeping it," he said to her screwed up face. "Just use that other player the boys got you for once. I've got metalwork needs doing, so I won't be able to listen in another minute and you can go on your merry way."

Angel brightened up, though she also looked surprised. "Really?" He rolled his eyes and then whistled along to the song jauntily, and she elbowed him. "Don't make my songs creepy. All I'm saying is, this sure looked like one of those life lesson moments you like to have. 'You can't always get what you want, Quill. Life's really frigging hard, Quill, here's a demonstration how.'"

"Naw. I felt like getting you to let me listen to this thing."

She couldn't figure that out, honest though it was, and frowned a bit. "All right then," Angel said, deciding to let it alone. "Hey, I'm off-roster right now and I was going to work out. But are you doing heavy metalwork?"

"Yeah, ship maintenance. Got some inner plates that need knocking into shape and tempering up."

"Think I'll join you. Hauling all that equipment around is as good as hitting up the gym. And we're pretty much there already."

It was a good bout of work, with several other crewmembers at it too. Angel went over to bother Lekin for all the tips she could get out of her, since Lekin was considered to be the best in the crew at this kind of thing, and Yondu concentrated properly on what he was doing. He could yell at himself for deciding to make his life difficult later on tonight, before sleep, along with a bottle of something that burned down the throat. He could think then on how to go about getting her.


	2. Dances of sorts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So some of my headcanons were validated by Vol. 2, some jossed. In this story, Yondu lived in a hunter-gatherer society for a good while before he got off the planet and started living in space. Mostly, I like the courtship rituals I came up with too much to delete what was already written. And I took out a reference to Quill's father in chapter one that leaned towards sounding like he might have a decent thought in his head, because my level of Fuck That Guy is too high to deny. I hope other details that don't work with Vol. 2 are not too jarring.
> 
> Speaking of what was already written: I really didn't think it would take me this long to update after posting the first chapter. Sorry about that! Thank you for the gentle & enthusiastic encouragement in comments; I appreciate it a lot. I will continue with this story, though probably slowly, and intend to at least get to the bullet point in my notes that says "extended pornography". (This was started for a kink meme, after all. There are faster updates at [the kink meme thread](http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com/1806.html?thread=251918#t251918), btw, in a bit-by-bit way as I finish sections, rather than whole chapters.)

* * *

  


A few days later, Yondu decided it was time to ask:

"YOU WANT A SKIN GRAFT, QUILL?"

Once you made your way into the wider galaxy, it was smart to take a relaxed approach to the traditions you took with you. Nobody else was going to take them seriously the way you did, and the only other option was to go all Kree about it and enforce a sense of seriousness, and enough of the galaxy was on seventeen kinds of fire because of attitudes like that. Develop a sense of humour about it all and you lived happier, with fewer injuries all around.

Yondu worked on with his laser torch, watching from the corner of his eye as Quill stopped and stared.

"NO! WHAT? DID YOU JUST--WHAT?"

The metal sheeting they were hovering in front of creaked ominously and they turned their attention back to fixing it in place. The previous repairs-shift had glued it in and now it was time to make the join permanent. Three crewmembers worked at the bottom of the sheeting, and Yondu, Quill, and Kraglin were in harnesses attached to overhead rails so they could work on the top. Kraglin scraped off the glue at the marked points, Quill followed, making blasts with a laser torch over the same spots to smear the adjacent metal sheets together, and Yondu was next, finishing the job by fixing metal patches over that.

Soon Quill got too close to Kraglin to keep welding and switched the laser torch off, and the noise decreased enough not to have to yell. "It's badass," Yondu said.

"A _skin graft_? What are you talking about?"

The other thing about cultural traditions was that people most likely didn't so much as suspect they existed, never mind lending them weight. Yondu unzipped the left sleeve of his overalls and pushed it and the undershirt out of the way to show the inner arm.

Quill winced in an intrigued way and leaned closer to peer at the stitch marks making patterns on his arm - a star-shape for decoration that he now found overly fancy, and inside it, the older, practical square of stitches that had made a patch of scarred, bluer, once-other skin part of him. He patted it fondly.

"You get high first. Goes down a treat then."

Quill lifted her gaze to his face and stared a while. She lifted her laser torch, pushed the start button to release a flare of sharp white light, and turned back to welding.

Pity. A patch of blue standing out against her skin would have been a satisfactory sight.

As she was ahead in the line, Quill's job naturally finished before his. She walked off with others who were finished, but not before craning her head to catch his eye. He waved with his fingertips and she made a Ravager sign back: _Got my eye on you._

That evening he went to sit beside her in the canteen, squeezing onto the end of a bench. "That was an entirely heartfelt offer I made you."

"Uh-huh."

"And the high you get to work up beforehand really is a ball."

"Uh-huh. I know what you're doing, by the way," Quill told him, not looking up from her meal. "I'm on to it. You can't convince me of bullshit as easily as when I was a kid. Try and have your fun; you'll see."

"Uh-huh," he mimicked her. She stabbed out to get the quiverton on his plate in revenge, but it got out of the way of the chopsticks in time. Then she stared, practically gobsmacked, as Yondu moved his plate closer and rolled the quiverton onto hers.

"Ask if you want it." She was entitled to two things from his serving at this point in proceedings. Or considering the size of the audience in the canteen, maybe it was half the contents of the plate, but it didn't seem necessary to stake that much of a claim. Not like anyone else was known to be after her.

"I'm assuming you wouldn't poison me," Quill said, not actually nervous but seeming to feel she ought to put in the effort.

"Just eat."

There was a silence, and then: "How about the oth? I really liked the oth - it's so good tonight." He let out a laugh and scraped it onto her plate. Girl never did quit while she was ahead.

"That's the spirit, Quill. You're getting into it. I like that."

She had her mouth full when she said in a low voice, "Still got my eye on you." Nobody around the table acted like they'd heard; he let it pass with a nudge to her side.

It _was_ fun to tease.

*

The next day some shit caught fire.

The culprits expected death, or as much of a beating as it took for Yondu to get tired.

"You know, this could be fun," he told them, and merely sent them to settle the flame containment right until the chemstop reconfigured into something safe to put out the flames without poisoning the atmosphere. It needed the processing time sometimes, considering all the different kinds of flammable materials to be found in your average ship. Punches could be worked into the schedule later, if they didn't save him time and fall in the fire. Besides, sometimes it was even better to seem a little nuts than to seem like a total hardass.

Meanwhile, Angel had come running for the excitement. He called her over, told her to fetch a few things that he wanted to get rid of from one of his lockers. "You could have trashed this stuff any time," she told him, puzzled, once she'd returned with pocketfuls of data chips and a box under one arm.

"Yeahh, wanna see it go personally, though. Some shit needs an end put to it spectacularly. Didja find the tongue too? No need to make that face, it came from this total a-hole, you don't know the half of it. Besides, that species can grow them back. Usually."

Despite all the grossed-out objection in her expression, she stuck around to watch him toss the memories, enjoying the one small explosion that resulted (or maybe the way it made a couple of the boys yelp and run away). Though she did tell him, "You are so weird, and you look like Satan right now."

"What's a satan?"

"This guy from Earth you'd get along with, probably." Oh, he liked that crooked smile a lot. It looked deeper and softer in the flickering light, and then wilder than normal as she turned back to the flames.

You had to see your squeeze by firelight. It wasn't a rule or anything, but something that should have happened simply in the way of things.

Then Angel started getting overly curious about the stuff he'd burnt, trying to pick loose information, but he'd taught her a lot of tricks and had learned a lot of hers, and he could tell what she was up to. Keeping an eye on him, like she'd said she would. And it was to chase such a simple answer, too - maybe he ought to give bigger clues in this game.

*

"How about we have a party on board. Soon, huh?" Yondu suggested to Kraglin, who, as expected, got into it and organised the whole thing - doing stock take for drinks and good eats, picking a time and tweaking work shifts to suit, making the announcement. Kraglin never seemed to be sucking up when he got like that, though by rights it should have been annoying as hell - he genuinely got on board with a lot of Yondu's ideas and was good about working out how they had to happen. (That brought the count up to about a dozen crewmembers Yondu wouldn't toss out of an airlock one day if the mood took him, he decided, and tried to let the thought show in his face for the rest of the day. A lot of people scurried around faster than usual. Success!)

There was nothing for Yondu to dress up in for the occasion, nor to dress Quill up in - no way he could make jack shit kinds of jewellery with a straight face anymore. They used to work with fish bones back home, for crying out loud. It made for a workable balance, though, him and Quill both looking the same as usual, and there were other ways to keep at his fun.

For example, one of the best tactics for keeping Angel Quill's attention for a significant length of time: "All right, let's have it. You're teaching me to dance."

She lit up. Naturally, 'The Robot' was a disgrace of a so-called dance that was chosen to piss him off.

All the same, Quill's smile was miles wide. Some people teased her for that easy target and she bristled, so Yondu steered the two of them away to the drinks. Quill kept smiling. He wondered if he could get anywhere with her already. It was fun circling closer, but hell, it wouldn't trouble him to lay her ahead of schedule.

The girl _was_ sticking close by more than usual, and not with the suspicion she'd been keeping up lately. Even hooked an arm around his to pull him away from Ieeez fouling up the dance floor and about to flail into them, and that was sweeter than she'd normally be with people around. He didn't muss her hair like usual, only tugging a curl that had escaped her messy ponytail; a lighter touch so as to leave her wanting more. She shot him some big-eyed blinking.

"Now, fair warning," Yondu said. "If I tell you that I'm going to sing, you need to turn right around and leave. Do not listen. I'll be drunk and it'll be a bad idea."

"Aw, man, and we haven't bought that camera yet!" Quill said, grinning. "That sounds like the kind of thing that needs to get out there on the datawebs."

"It loses me much more than I win. Every time. In that one respect, screw tradition."

She bugged him intermittently for the next hour to get him to sing 'those soulful Centaurian ballads of days gone by', bringing drinks in encouragement. Just like, in fact, tradition dictated, which was a thought that went down as easily as the booze, hitting hard and leaving him stupid. What the hell was the wonder about the two of them accidentally falling into rhythms he'd grown up with? Ones he'd lost over the first wild years of getting into space, and later recreated with cussedness and desperation when he'd won his way to a position where he could get away with it? Yeah, what wonder, sure.

Yondu got his fingers round her wrist. Sleeve in the way, all that leather and plastic. he said, "I'll do you a lullaby."

Which, it occurred to him a tick later, was not the slick lead-in for getting somebody in bed that it had seemed before popping out of his mouth. He wasn't drunk enough to sing yet, but he sure was drunk.

Angel frowned. "More than a decade late on that offer, Yondu. It still would have been totally weird then, but. You know. All right."

That was not a mood setter for him nor for her. The annoyance lingered on her face, and then he unpeeled his grip and she went over to a knot of gamblers and made to watch the game, frowning the whole time that he didn't quit staring that way.

Fucking nostalgia. Got him gloomy. Sentiment, there you had it, never brought anyone anything worth spitting on.

So the party didn't end up a success, all told. That was that - the game was played out. Yondu gave a shrug to himself and backed off on chasing Quill, refocusing on chasing down jobs and likely spots to salvage treasures of the galaxy no one else would get their hands dirty for. Business was business, kept his belly full and his crew satisfied, so might as well go and un-distract himself. Clearly that had been a dumb idea to start with. Fucking Quill was one thing, but the rest - how had he made that sound like a plan to himself?

  
Well, whoops ... hold on a second.

  
The thing was: throughout the digging for work, the main Santi ship ducked in and out of their sensors' range, and every so often, there were blips from their M-ships. (Never more than three. Was that because they had lost ships, or because they were trying to seem like pushovers right before pushing real hard?) If Yondu tweaked a few settings on his console, and he could pick up that signal the Santi were sending out from the trackers that had settled quietly into the corners of their ship, as per their final programmed instruction.

He couldn't take a step back from Quill - there was the plan to get through; their secret.

When Quill was around to see any sign of the Santi crew she'd catch his eye or start getting fidgety. And she was around all the time, pretty much - that was how shipboard life was, as packed-in elbow-to-eyeball as any village, regardless of how pissy you were at each other. Was it still appealing to imagine her on his arm, with this sharp reminder that she'd rarely be out of sight for a full day's length? He couldn't say so and yet could not junk the image, either.

It wasn't supposed to be like that, now was it? Ought to be easy to wave this idea away like a buzzing bug, as easy as it had been to pick it up in the first place. But it had brewed up slowly, quietly, before he made the decision to take action, so it might well take time before it let him go, too.

It was Quill that breached the space between them. Jumped up to cross the Lost & Found & Fight Room when she saw him take a look in to make sure nothing was breaking too completely. She was impatient, not dodging as much as she ought to around the junk piles as the other fighters' dud shots flew, just yelling when she got a couple of hits thumping into her side and back.

Yondu didn't let a lick of anything show - what was there to show, anyway? When she reached him, he waved for her to follow and she did so willingly. So what? Leave it. But still, it would be best to take care of things someplace quiet... The ship was relatively close to a supermassive black hole liable to bend the instruments' perception too far out of whack to risk going at a decent clip, so the corridors with a view of space were usually empty these days because most everybody got creeped out by all the shit spiralling off into nothing in the distance. The first back-and-aft hallway with portholes did the trick as a meeting place, not a footfall to be heard clanging in the distance.

"Getting nervous about the Santi tailing us again, Quill?" he asked, steady as you please.

"Uh-huh, yeah. We'd better get on with that. I thought up a couple of things I'll need aside from the imager - new clothes, for one thing, my usual gear's not going to do anything but make the Nova Corps suspicious.

"But. Also: that thing," Quill said, brisk. "From a few days ago. Show it again."

"What thing."

"On your arm. The graft."

"Hey, what's this! You think it looks cool after all?" He snorted. "Changed your mind about getting one?"

Quill shrugged. "Changed it about certain things."

Now, what did she judge she had to be cagey about? She had a knack for looking innocent in a way that telegraphed exactly how innocent she wasn't, but was hard to get a read on otherwise; this sunny and soulful look.

Yondu put his hand behind her neck and dragged her closer, inspecting her from inches away. Shouldn't have, probably, but it was done before he thought.

" _Jeez_ , Yondu! All right, already!" Quill batted at him, darting back. Blushing, heh. Frustration rather than feeling hot to trot, but she wore it well. "It just ... it looks ... weird, okay? What happened? Why'd you get it? Does it..." She winced. "...hurt? I've kinda been wondering, is all, since it seems like it came onto your mind real suddenly that time."

"I wanted it. What the hell - you been worrying? Seven shifts now since I showed you, and it's been bugging you?" He thought of the party again, how much she'd hovered around him, and how she'd been sitting near him in the canteen to eat lately. Seemed like that was on purpose, not just because of the close confines of their lives. She'd been thinking on it all the while.

"The looming spectre of torture occasionally makes an impact on my mind, yeah, who'd have thought!"

"Naw, no torture. Don't you know the worst of my stories by now? And I told you, this little patch was fun."

"The kind of crazy-awful things you've described to me as 'fun' in the past..."

"It only burns at first. Couple days, is all."

She tilted her head to study him. "You're not selling this at all. There are a number of scars that you've convinced me are or would be cool to have, but this one? Just weird and painful, from the sound of it. I'm the better bullshitter here, you have to admit." In a thoughtful half-mumble, she added, "You're the better storyteller, though."

She was angling. Was she angling? "Wanna hear all about it?"

"Instead ... tell me why you made up that Lost & Found & Fight room," she said, volume gradually getting up to speaking tone. "No one does that, Yondu! I've been through the schematics of enough ships and buildings to know. The story better be hilarious. I've got ash down the back of my coat, jeez. Got Pinda real good in the first place, though, and hey, I did win my coat back."

Look at that grin! Back to normal. That was what she wanted. And him too, with a nagging desire that was hard to dismiss, to see if she would still dance her way around him while she talked that bullshit she was proud of. Just getting to see if they were as they'd been - still trusting, still teasing. And worrying, for crying the fuck out loud, even as she tried to swallow it.

There would be other parties, he decided. It'd be dumb to throw out the whole concept because the first try hadn't gone okay. This time she'd come to him, see that. When he licked his lips for launching into her requested snip of ship history she gave an encouraging look; the talk wandered and they ended up sliding down a wall and lounging on the floor to chat, 'cause why not, it was his ship. Angel wanted to, besides.

He wasn't going to stop this. He was almost grateful to the troubles with Santi, so there was an excuse to the way he couldn't stop himself.

Yondu lowered his voice so Angel would lean in closer. She was as good as got.

***

Space was crammed full of stunning, pretty, beautiful, hot, lovely, magnificent, cute, and even somehow-indefinably attractive women, and one day Angel Quill would die of it.

Current example - and Angel sweated some more - was the shop assistant helping her put on a tight four-piece suit. Why did it have to be a whole thing that lots of fashionable Xandarian outfits required help to dress in? Didn't they get enough of the love and togetherness ideals from how the whole Nova Force Worldmind Manifest was written up? The process gave time for her eyes to keep straying to the assistant's pink hair; Mom had promised Angel could dye her hair pink once she turned thirteen, and it looked cool on the shop assistant and she wanted to say so. But also: no way. Opening up a conversation? Stupid. That led to a terrible end.

Death-by-random-woman wouldn't be the result of an awesome heroic move, like, making the ultimate gesture for true love or whatever. Oh no. Angel would watch a girl go by when she ought to be looking ahead, and bam, traffic accident with her entire crew laughing at her memory for the rest of their asshole lives. She'd hook up with someone hot and not realise until it was too late that their skin reacted to human spit by turning into hydrochloric acid. Or Angel would flirt, the other woman would simply speak to her, and as those air vibrations turned into the neural impulses that her translator worked with, she would drop as dead from embarrassment as she deserved to.

"This will surely be adequate," the shop assistant said, professionally enthusiastic tone given a touch of something else by the arch of a lined eyebrow, and Angel had to try to be surreptitious about airing her armpits to get cooler.

"Second opinion time! And third," she blurted with a smile that probably made her look rabid, and rushed out of her changing room to display the outfit to Yondu and Kraglin. Thumbs up from one, thumbs down from the other. And back to the change rooms for more Xandarian high fashion, the better to fool Nova Corps with on the distress call ... and a total hottie who she couldn't even try and impress.

_I am no Princess Leia,_ she dolefully admitted as she traipsed to the front of the store again, now dressed in a fancy jumpsuit, painfully aware of the assistant watching her go. (Professional interest or appreciating the view?) Not to disdain the excellence of pulling off a solid Han Solo, but it would also be great to be a Jabba-strangling hardass of royal poise and verve. Had Leia liked girls too, though? Whatever, it could have happened in downtime, in-between the rebel alliance stuff. Everybody needed a break.

Unfortunately, what she got was Kraglin, who snorted with laughter the more Angel felt herself growing flustered and red-faced. "What are you here for?" she snapped.

"Got an eye for sharp duds." Behind the dainty couch Kraglin lounged on, a passing customer stumbled in shock. "That outfit might be all right, if you do your hair proper to match."

"For the entire time that I've known you, I don't believe you've changed your clothes more than twice," Angel challenged. Now light left the eyes of the store manager, who'd been hovering nearby ever since they'd entered. Sometimes it was great to be a total Ravager, every move oozing attitude no matter where you went, and sometimes it was embarrassing. In the gently gold-lit store, so quiet and fancy that it probably counted as a boutique or something, it was a relief that Kraglin and Yondu could be reasonably decent around normal people and didn't whip out weapons at every funny look. But they sure did stand out.

"Hey - put on the next li'l number," said Yondu. "I got an appointment coming up, don't forget. So jump."

She how high'd, turning to go and having to remind herself not to start immediately undressing before she was in her change room and out of view of everyone else. Here was a way being a Ravager had messed with her own ability to be around normal people - sometimes it felt baffling that others didn't perform every action of their lives in view of the same forty to fifty people you'd known since childhood and who barely cared about what you did anyway.

_Be better than that, Quill, that's most of what you have going for you._

"This dress would have a more ideal fit if you wore the special corset associated with this style," the shop assistant said as she pulled the next outfit into place around Angel, hands moving professionally and lightly. "If you are comfortable undressing more fully, I'd be happy to assist in lacing one up."

Angel was not better than anyone at all.

"Yeah okay you can go now!" she yelped, her mind transformed into a pit of filth, her repressed internal whimpers about the shop assistant's low-cut neckline now unleashed as a howl in every brain cell.

"I don't mean to force a sale, madam. Please consider this advice as--"

"Eeehh, you know how it gets in cross-culture situations like this, one of your customs gets accidentally broken and it's no harm, no foul, but it still kinda _rankles_ , so..."

Her favourite way to end conversations worked again. "My apologies. I didn't understand that was happening. I will take my leave. But, before I go--" a smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes "--be assured that you nonetheless look lovely."

Annnd there it was. In those last words, she gained an accent and voice that were way too much a reminder of when Angel's mother still had the energy to speak properly, to sing song after song. Every time. Every single time she thought a lady was pretty and/or nice enough, the translator assigned them that voice.

"Ma'am? Sure you're doin' all right there?" Her syntax and dialect had been put through the shift too! She wasn't that pretty!

Oh shit, her hand was coming up to touch, and yes, she was. "Just fine, please, there are customers better able to tip waiting for you," Angel said with a desperate wink. The assistant arched that articulate brow and finally left.

"I _hate_ you, you damn..." Angel told her translator implant, a hand over the back of her neck where it had been implanted, like she could squeeze it into working less terribly.

She didn't pray a lot anymore, except for when she'd was in the two-guns-held-to-your-head kind of hard negotiation situations that brought out the believer in most people, but Angel sent up a pretty serious THANK GOD for the fact that the women in her crew were so not attractive to her, were jerks like everyone else, and that there had never been many of them. She'd have been dead meat if she got like this about any of them, with all her attention on her stomach doing backflips and, every so often, on trying not to cry from tsunamis of homesickness.

Maybe it was a pity none of the guys were attractive to her either. Guys never gave her the Voice Issue.

Dealing with humiliation was similar to dealing with a crime: don't shoot unnecessarily, flee the scene, never return (before you can turn the previous time into a funny story). Angel bustled out of her changing room with the dress sort of falling into three sections around her. She went to stand by Yondu, back to him. "Zip me up."

He yanked one open by a couple inches instead, as he was a first-class jerk. "Yondu--" she started to complain, but he lifted a finger in front of her mouth.

"Gonna tuck in the tag, straighten up some straps, make it look good," he said slowly. She waited with generous patience as he neatened it, the tag now tickling her spine, and then tugged all the zips to their ends - equally as slowly as he'd spoken.

"Uuuuuuhh," Kraglin said, with surprising conviction, sitting up straight.

Angel brightened. "It looks that good? Go ahead, admit it."

"Yeah, real, uh, pretty?" he said. Huh, they usually gave each other way more shit than that.

"I'll get you this one," Yondu said, and Angel's idle suspicions vanished into a gulf of having lost all sense of knowing what to do. Kraglin whipped his head around to stare at the Captain at the same instant she did, making part of her cringe.

The offer was way too nice. It could be genuinely termed as 'nice', and it was in public, and a member of the crew was a witness, and _Don't hug! Don't be polite!_ Angel told herself. Old, innocent responses were stirring in her. _It'll make him do the baby talk sounds!_

"I'll get those bots," she returned. It was the closest thing to a useable deal between them to bring the situation to a normal level. The look on her face was definitely still giving too much away. Yondu was smiling about it.

"She have the underwear for that style?" Kraglin asked sort of into the air, voice thin. "Those petal-looking things are supposed to be moving, right..."

"Oh - yes, that is accurate, sir!" The manager did an admirable job of stifling a double take at Kraglin. "A choice of undergarments should certainly have been presented to madam to get the full effect. Let's rectify that; there is a range to select from--"

"No shit?" said Yondu, turning fast to face the manager, and Angel cut the line of inquiry off in another burst of sweat.

"That's fine! I thanked your lovely assistant, she tried to help with that, but corsets, you know, they make me feel suffocated. And sad. They're against my culture. And religion, too, the whole shebang."

"Corsets, huh?" Yondu looked entertained, but luckily, kept in mind that he ought to wrap up this part of the trip. "Maybe another day. Or Tailor can fix up the dress so it fits anyhow, if you still want it. Give it a personal touch."

"Perfect! There's our solution. Let me get my stuff and we'll pay."

'Her' assistant was nowhere in sight when she slunk into the dressing room area - another clean getaway for Angel Quill. Then all she had to do was pay, and deal with the surreality of watching Yondu tap out a unit transfer for a gift, for her. She put it in the bag with her other new clothes like it might bite.

The dress was fancy. And as girly as could be. 'Petal-looking things', Kraglin had said - yeah, that really was what the skirt part of it looked like, so she probably lurked in the middle like some kind of fairy bandit when she wore it. Why had she chosen it for trying on? "I never used to like dresses," she muttered.

"What, you don't want it after all?" Yondu asked, disgruntled, which might mean he was just disgruntled, or _actually_ bugged in a way that would keep him mad for days, or thinking about something else entirely.

"I didn't say anything!" She transferred the bag to her other arm, further out of his reach, just in case.

The possessiveness seemed to ease things, but he still said, "I heard you--"

"It's a busy shopping complex, there's ambient noise. Where's the transport around here, anyhow - we can't have you being late, Captain!"

Kraglin's Xandarian background came in handy again, and he deciphered the Empire's public transport symbols to get Yondu on his way towards the laboratory where some of the boys had already off-loaded the Tokere-Hull pay dirt (haha). Obviously the next step was for Yondu to barge into the place in an excessively friendly way and ask to see what they were doing with it, so as to figure out if any more money could be screwed out of them.

Normally that was the kind of thing Kraglin went along for, to enjoy watching Yondu perform or to keep him from whistling too much while he worked. This time he hung back with Angel, seeing Yondu off with a nod. Afterwards, they turned back to wander the mall.

"Uh, Quill ... you and the Captain..." Kraglin began.

Angel launched into a story - if Yondu wanted him to know about the Santi plan, Yondu would tell him, and in the meantime, she'd better throw him off the trail. "Can you believe him backing me into a corner like that? He's been getting at me to buy bots for clean-up - you know, the little ones that constantly need replacing - just 'cause I'm the one who used to clear out the vents. Like that job was even fair! Now I owe him for the outfit, so I have to," she grumbled. This actually was annoying, in a way. At one point in her life she'd had to be grateful for the chance to keep a place in the crew by squirming through dusty vents basically every month. "Bastard." At least it had had the side-effect of allowing her to map out the vents that were big enough to fit in bodily, which came in handy when she had to escape from angry crew.

Kraglin looked like he didn't enjoy what he was thinking. Hopefully he wasn't taking a turn being one of the whiners who jumped on any little interaction as being a sign of sucking up to the Captain. "Have you two danced since that party, or anything along those lines?"

"What's 'along the lines of' dancing lessons? And why would I, it's not like Yondu spends his days as drunk as when he's in a party mood. That was probably once-in-a-lifetime. It's a shame, it was funny." Also, fun, in that relaxed way where nobody ended up breathing through new holes. Would be good to get more of that.

"No dancing, and no other lessons. Nothing one-on-one."

"Nope."

"Do you think there's likely to be anything like that?"

"I'm an ace shot and the best pilot on our boat, what more is there for him to teach me?"

"Nothing. Except maybe not to be a dumbass kid. So, what else are you planning to get up to down here?" he said, all in the same drawl, when really he should have started getting snarly about being the better pilot.

Kraglin was being practically pleasant. Angel got the feeling that they were both eyeballing each other for signs of something gone wrong. She had better dial it back, though, it wasn't like he looked as if he were sick or had spotted a sniper or anything, and acting out of the ordinary could clue him in to digging up more about the Let's Chat Up the Nova Corps plan. It was natural to say she was hoping to do tech shopping to see if she could come up with something new to give her an edge. There, now she could go find gadgets they could use to send the fake distress call.

He came along, and she didn't shake him off. Company seemed like a thing to keep, while the day was going so well. Even if it was also going weirdly.

*

About an hour later, as inevitably as the rays of sunshine shortened and fell into a simmering noon on the mall's walkways, alarms went off.

That changed the tone of things pretty much back to the usual. Kraglin had had a brief debate mostly with himself and marginally with Angel, about how likely the commotion was to having anything to do with their crew running loose in this nice, boring town, and then headed towards the noise. Angel wandered on, acting like any other shopper, directly to their hired car. As she folded into the driver's seat - why were hired vehicles designed for people half her size, practically every time? - the 'come get me' code trilled out of her phone. Must be Kraglin; he'd guessed right, then. She kicked the joystick ('steershaft', whatever) to save time on getting the car moving and it shot sideways-and-up through clustered lower-ground traffic to the sound of more alarms and protesting hoots.

Angel got her seat mostly comfortable, said, "Come with me and escape," like a badass, and manoeuvred into a slot on the fast lane that curled around the mall complex. The 'come get me' beeps guided her, growing faster and more urgent the closer she got to where the crew needed extraction, and finally she popped over the lane walls and zoomed down to get them.

Turned out you could cram seven or so full-grown Ravagers into a titchy hired car like they were circus clowns, when they were motivated. If you were the driver you could yell at them to give you enough space to steer in and watch them suck in their stomachs and stick various body parts out the windows, and then Angel had to work hard to swallow her laughter.

"Nuns? Nuns!" Kraglin yelled disbelievingly from the passenger seat, from beneath two and three-quarters other people. Parts of who were turning red and purple.

"They sure don't make _them_ like I'm used to," someone muttered.

Just another Ravager adventure. One which Angel was going to have to blackmail or bribe a select few in order to get the details of, because it sounded hilarious and no one bit when she fished for more, starting to get mad instead. They headed to the space docks, and then either to their M-ships or to pour dockside drinks over their sorrows.

Angel hitched a ride with Panpan, who was limping too much to feel like a drink, and headed starwards. Home.

Once she'd saluted her thanks for the lift and they parted ways so that Panpan could go lick their wounds (or hopefully do something more hygienic), she figured that was probably it for company for the day. Unless she did shifts with the crewmembers that still had work ... nah, too much effort. Everybody else was more than likely to stay in town and get hammered while they could enjoy the infrequent embrace of concrete or grass.

She dug into the bags of goods she'd bought and decided to start figuring out her new imager, walking slowly to the densest cluster of gravity generators on the ship. Most people worked on gadgets in rooms around there, in case there were fluctuations in gravity - it was where you'd be least bothered by floating nuts and bolts, and could generally catch them before they drifted much. She heard footsteps, and glanced over her shoulder to see Yondu striding up.

It was a strange thing, she realised, to be happy about.

"What's your favourite kind of dead animal?" Yondu asked.

Of course. Never mind discussing the plan, or his check-in at the lab, or even the weather, now that they'd experienced some for a change. No, the thing to do was clearly to keep being random and weird.

She put on a hard-ass face, sticking her jaw out and going narrow-eyed in a Clint Eastwood kind of look, and snarled, "The only good space roach is a dead space roach."

"Angel! Ain't no such thing and I've told you that before!"

"You don't know shit! I don't know shit. In this vast, challenging universe, none of us can truly say that we--" Angel dodged a shove at her shoulder, laughing. "Hey, if you ask something that weird, what kind of answer do you expect?"

"Don't expect easy questions to get screwed up by simpletons, but that's the mistake of my good-natured optimism."

"I like live animals. Birds," she decided, thinking fondly enough of birds that had caught her attention during shopping that morning: a few different species with similar attitudes, perching on ledges and hopping unconcerned between the crowds, chirping unexpected trills of song in contrast to the announcements and advertising jingles.

Yondu gave her a dissatisfied squint. "Having live animals on board is a mess."

"Don't have to tell me twice. I remember trying to have a pet as a kid! Those memories linger even when I try and get them out. A lot like the freaking bloodstains."

"If they're already dead it's easier to use 'em for decorating."

"You know, I deeply appreciate these rare words of wisdom," she told him with soft sincerity. He grabbed her shopping bags in retaliation and peered in.

Now, that was something that could get her pissed off. It was an established sequence: Yell or sulk, get snapped at, then sulk or yell. Stew over the lack of privacy on board, pick over the interaction to pinpoint every component of the unfairness, and kick at the fact that she couldn't figure out a way to make Yondu not do stuff like that, and take her something the faintest bit like seriously.

Angel looked at the corner of his mouth, the way he glanced at her smirk, and was sure he was teasing back. "You remember the new stuff I said I'll need soon," she told him as he lingered over the tech, and she knew he did take her seriously, or he wouldn't have collaborated on the Santi plan.

"Looking good, looking good," he murmured, handing the bags back. For a thoughtful moment his lips pursed, ready for the upcoming fight.

Understanding was a strange thing to have, but welcome. She could save getting mad for when Yondu really deserved getting ripped into. She could know that most of the time, he wasn't getting mad at her. A lot of the time, he was kidding around, in a rough, leader-of-the-pack way. Her Captain was being friendly.

Maybe this was it, maybe this was going to be her opinion of Yondu Udonta from now on. She'd run through plenty: Father - in that brief time before allowing the translator implant, when it had seemed like entirely too much of a coincidence that a spaceman had arrived to take her to the stars - kidnapper, teacher, crazy uncle, problem, bully, captain, idiot, partner in crime ... maybe that was where they were at now. Almost equals, almost people who appreciated each other. Maybe she could ask him for his opinion about the whole thing.

As if. Emotions, oh no, anything but that; Yondu wouldn't have patience with that kind of conversation. Ugh, why was she wasting time on this? Just because she no longer had to corner him into being a little pleasant. Just because he was possibly actively being nice after years of maybe having it happen, mostly by accident, when he couldn't stop himself. Just because of that shuttle trip back from Tokere-Hull.

She couldn't figure how she'd let herself lean against him like that, asking if she'd really-truly done all right. Acting like that had been okay when she was like, eleven, and had got knocked around on a job, or had shot someone in a gross place like the eyeball or vundlosa or book lung and too much splat had resulted. It wasn't something to do as an adult who knew how full of shit Yondu could be, and who knew how violently the crew would disdain it if she wanted ... approval or whatever.

Yondu had let her do it, when he should have been even more aware of the issues - no, he was fully aware, she knew that. He'd simply let her be comfortable. Now, a shopping trip, where he got her something nice, when she could have got by with the two outfits they'd already approved.

It seemed personal.

Shouldn't matter. Her pride should be in having achieved the right to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anyone in the crew, even the Captain. If she wanted to get all Ravager about it, she should be suspicious and disgusted at the first indication of a captain playing favourites. Relief kept breathing for her, though, and made her sigh wistfully at the memory of leaning into him for the assurance. Personal. Nice. Rarest things ever ... but maybe less so, lately.

It was quiet on board. She'd had an unexpectedly good morning, and now there was no one around and she still wanted company - so, if she got it, there would be no witnesses.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" Angel blurted.

Her usual strategy was to watch something in a common area loudly enough that people either got interested by what they heard, or pissed off about the racket, which made for at least two kinds of entertainment. _Asking_ was liable to get her laughed out of any given room.

"With you." Yondu's face twisted with scepticism. Then he raised his eyebrows like something had occurred to him. "Yeah, sure. That works, that's a good step to take."

There were a few too many seconds where they stared each other in the eye. _Huuuuggg_ , an inner eight-year-old Angel Quill told her, too used to the way people melted when they could believe that there was a sweet young lady under the dirt and tomboyishness. Or maybe the internal voice was like Mom trying to make a point. _Say thank yooooouuuu._

Her chest constricted. Her brain blitzed. Next thing she knew she was squeezing Yondu's arm. "At three. If that's okay."

Again there was no hint of putting her in her place, one that was at an appropriate distance. Yondu let out a low laugh like there was a need to convince her that there were a whole lot of jokes she was missing, said he could finish enough business by then, and brushed the side of one thumb very lightly over the back of her hand. It was like he was literally at the uttermost limit of his Being Nice Quota, and limiting his gestures accordingly. She did her best not to laugh back because of his sad, sad way of trying to be a social being.

When it couldn't be avoided, Angel thought that they were all messed up. The whole crew, herself included. They were weird, and awful as much as they were awesome; yeah, herself still included.

But it wasn't always that bad.

Being messed up together, and all.


End file.
